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The Five Spot: Entertainment To Put In Your Brain This Week

By
Douglas WolkSeptember 28, 2015

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Miley Cyrus

As the weather starts to be autumnal, this week’s entertainment is heavy on the transitional moments: pop craftswoman Carole King turning into a star singer/songwriter, regular Marvel Cinematic Universe humans emerging from their cocoons as Inhumans, and Miley Cyrus morphing into whatever bizarre entity her association with the Flaming Lips has turned her into.

AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D.
Jed Whedon co-wrote the third-season opener for Marvel’s cinematic-universe-uniting ABC series, which will apparently keep building up the Inhumans plotline and set up something along the lines of Jonathan Hickman and Stefano Caselli’s Secret Warriors comics. And keep your eyes peeled for Bobbi and Hunter, who may get a show of their own. (Sep. 29)

THE CITY:NOW THAT EVERYTHING’S BEEN SAID
Carole King spent most of the ‘60s as an East Coast songwriter cranking out hits for pop acts, and the early '70s as a West Coast singer-songwriter — but in 1968, when she moved to L.A., she briefly fronted a band called The City, whose sole album, reissued this week, is a remarkable document of that transition (and yielded hit covers by Blood, Sweat & Tears and the Byrds). (Oct. 2)

THE MARTIAN
Ridley Scott’s movie (based on Andy Weir’s 2011 sci-fi novel) stars Matt Damon as an astronaut who’s stranded on Mars and has to figure out how to stay alive long enough to be rescued. Fun fact: Wadi Rum, an appropriately red, cliff-strewn valley in Jordan, reprises its role as Mars from movies including Red Planet and Mission to Mars. (Oct. 2)

TREVOR JACKSON PRESENTS: SCIENCE FICTION DANCEHALL CLASSICS
Adrian Sherwood’s 1980s-era label On-USound made records that didn’t sound like anything else — they were built from the components of hip-hop and punk, but Sherwood mixed everything with deep dub’s disorienting walls of ultra-bass and flurries of tape noise. This two-CD retrospective was assembled by Trevor Jackson of Playgroup. (Oct. 2)

SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE
The guest host for SNL’s 41st season premiere is Miley Cyrus, who has entered an intensely weird phase of her career with the release of Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz (the video for “Dooo It!” is above). Will Vanessa Bayer end up pouring glue and glitter all over herself? Will Miley shock everyone by returning to her squeaky-clean “See You Again” image? (Probably not.) (Oct. 3)